Life, Work and Legacy of Carl Jung

Carl Jung on the “Artist.” – Anthology

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense – he is “collective man,” a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Literature

The work of art has its own specific psychology which is sometimes notably different from the psychology of the artist. Were it not so, the work of art would not be autonomous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 388-389.

The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 130.

I’m no artist. I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.

Surely modern art is trying its best to make man acquainted with a world full of darkness, but alas, the artists themselves are unconscious of what they are doing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 549-550

As experience shows, the figure one sees is not necessarily identical with the person one identifies with it, just as the picture by an artist is not identical with the original; but it is obvious that the vision of Christ was a most important religious experience to St. Paul. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 380.

Your general conclusion that contemporary Western artists unconsciously depict God’s image is questionable, as it is by no means certain that any inconceivability could be called “God,” unless one calls everything “God,” as everything ends in inconceivability. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 511-512

So modern art leads us away from the too great scattering of the libido on the external object, back to the creative source within us, back to the inner values. In other words, it leads us by the same path analysis tries to lead us, only it is not a conscious leadership on the part of the artist. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 60

We can hardly predict today what the artist is going to bring forth, but always a great religion has gone hand in hand with a great art. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 61

When an artist has a figure from the collective unconscious, he at once begins to play with it esthetically, and usually makes some concretization of it as a monument, etc. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 71

Any artist is doing that quite naturally, but he is getting only the esthetic values out of it while the analyst tries to get at all the values, ideational, esthetic, feeling, and intuitional. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 38

Analysis is fatal to second-rate artists, but that should be a feather in its cap. In analysis, or in an analyzed person, only something big comes through, whereas it is the tendency of our times to make it easy for every little cat or worm to be born into the art world. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 14

I would like to emphasize that it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 625-626

Not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 93

As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense—he is “collective man,” a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 157

It makes no difference whether the artist knows that his work is generated, grows and matures within him, or whether he imagines that it is his own invention. In reality it grows out of him as a child its mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 159

By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 130

The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 130

The artist seizes on this image, and in raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 130

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 157

The great work of art is a product of the time, of the whole world in which the artist is living, and of the millions of people who surround him, and of the thousands of currents of thought and the myriad streams of activity which flow around him. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 128

I find Blake a tantalizing study, since he has compiled a lot of half- or undigested knowledge in his fantasies. According to my idea, they are an artistic production rather than an authentic representation of unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 512-514.

We find . . . in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations . . . from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 25

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Jungian Analysis is one of the most unique adventures a person can embark upon. While Carl Jung developed and proved the usefulness of his methods of analysis in the psychiatric ward, today many psychologically healthy individuals are discovering the depths of their own psyche through engaging with the messages from their own unconscious brought to […]

Frith Luton

Bollingen Press

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